Question

Take the tripservice wsdl from this link In this wsdl, I replaced the from element with the below(added nillable as true and added min length and max length restriction).

<xs:element minOccurs="0" name="from" nillable="true">
            <xs:simpleType>
              <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
                <xs:minLength value="1"/>
                <xs:maxLength value="12"/>
              </xs:restriction>
            </xs:simpleType>
          </xs:element>

Now in my vb.net client i invoked the service by adding service reference, wsdl saved to a local folder.

Dim objproxy As New Tripservice.TripPriceServiceFacadeClient
        Dim gh As New Tripservice.trip
        gh.adults = 9
        gh.duration = 8
        gh.rooms = 8
        gh.to = "p"
        objproxy.getTripPrice(gh)

It will throw end point not found exception, however i am interested in the request xml that is going. I enabled the trace and found that the below request is generated.

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <s:Body xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
      <getTripPrice xmlns="http://trip.price.service">
         <trip xmlns="">
            <adults>9</adults>
            <duration>8</duration>
            <from xsi:nil="true"/>
            <rooms>8</rooms>
            <to>p</to>
         </trip>
      </getTripPrice>
   </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

The element from xsi:nil=”true” is generated, even though i am not touching the element in my vb.net code to generate the request. The element is optional as per the wsdl(min occurs = 0). How can i send a request without the from element name, even passed in the request?

Answer 1

You can’t; it is interesting to find out why you changed it to nillable; in doing that, the way .NET code generation works, you leave it no way to know whether it should marshall the tag or not; typically, an optional string that is null is not marshalled. An optional (minOccurs=0) and nillable wouldn’t work since there is no “set” indicator (JAXB has it or use to have it) to keep trace whether the user code set the value, null or not null.